Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonias sometimes have a few features of connective tissue disease (CTD) and yet do not fulfil the diagnostic criteria for any specific CTD. OBJECTIVE: This study was conducted to elucidate the characteristics, prognosis, and disease behavior in patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) associated with systemic sclerosis (SSc)-related autoantibodies. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed medical records of 72 ILD patients: 40 patients with SSc (SSc-ILD) and 32 patients with SSc-related autoantibody-positive ILD but not with CTD (ScAb-ILD), indicating lung-dominant CTD with SSc-related autoantibody. RESULTS: Patients with SSc-ILD were predominantly females and non-smokers, and most had nonspecific interstitial pneumonia confirmed by high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) and pathological analysis. However, about half of the patients with ScAb-ILD were male and current or ex-smokers. On HRCT analysis, honeycombing was more predominant in patients with ScAb-ILD than with SSc-ILD. Pathological analysis showed the severity of vascular intimal or medial thickening in the SSc-ILD patients to be significantly higher than that in the ScAb-ILD patients. Survival curves showed that the patients with ScAb-ILD had a significantly poorer outcome than those with SSc-ILD. CONCLUSION: Data from this study suggest that lung-dominant CTD with SSc-related autoantibody is a different disease entity from SSc-ILD.